The 2.6 kernel has a new system for handling PCMCIA, but Puppy up until and including Puppy3 uses the old "2.4 kernel" system. The old system took care of loading the correct kernel modules.

The are two modules to be concerned about for a PCMCIA card. Firstly, there is the bridge, or interface between the PCI bus and the PCMCIA card, and these modules are easy to determine. An example is yenta_socket.ko.

Some PCMCIA cards require another specialised kernel module. For example, PCMCIA network cards. I have a Ethernet card that requires the xirc2ps_cs.ko module. It is this second group of modules that are more tricky to determine which to load.

The second group was taken care of by the older PCMCIA sytem, but in Dingo I have gone over to the new 2.6 'pcmciautils' system. All Dingo alpha releases so far only load the PCI-PCMCIA bridge driver, not the second one.

I am seriously thinking of moving to udev, which I think will make selecting and loading the second driver easy. But, I need to learn all about udev first and it won't be in Puppy 4.00. In the meantime I have written a script that hopefully succeeds in determing the appropriate driver to load. Well, it works for my card.

Do you have a PCMCIA network card? Try the attached script, let me know if it guesses right. I have only tested this script in Dingo.

The script is rather slow. I see it as a temporary solution only, but it really should be rewritten in C if I use it in Puppy 4.00.

Attached. You will need to gunzip it and set its executable attribute.

If the card is recognised, the '0.0' directory should exist. If you can return the content of 'modalias' that will enable me to work out what is going wrong in your situation._________________http://bkhome.org/news/

If the card is recognised, the '0.0' directory should exist. If you can return the content of 'modalias' that will enable me to work out what is going wrong in your situation._________________http://bkhome.org/news/

I might just have to muddle by with Puppy 4.00, and get udev working with pcmciautils for a later version.

Of course, I could just drop back to the old 'pcmcia-cs' package ...no, I don't want to do that.

I need to study the subject a bit more. It may be that there are configure options prior to compiling to tell pcmciautils to use hotplug rather than udev -- I thought that I read something about that somewhere.

Then there's the statement I read that udev supercedes hotplug, but had a read of the hotplug intro page and it gives no hint whatsoever that it is superceded. They are surging forward developing their product for 2.6 Linux.

I'm a bit of a "babe in the woods" right now with this stuff. I'm going to study it though and find my way out._________________http://bkhome.org/news/

2. Tried the above card again at a later time. This time 'scan'
didn't report any AP. Ran it again and it DID report the two
APs. Chose the 'open' AP and 'Use this profile'. I got the
"Found network" message and ran "Auto DHCP". Was successful
- got a correct IP address.

Ran the 'Auto-probe' function ('Select module' ->
'More' menu. This turned out to be rather awkward to use as
after every test I was returned to the main menu and had to
click 'Select module' -> 'More' again to run the next test.
Result: no module found to work._________________Puppy unofficial tester (off and on) since v0.9.2

Posted: Sun 29 Jun 2008, 17:52 Post subject:
PCMCIA Surprise and confusionSubject description: It works in one computer and not the other

This is my first post so let me know how it can be improved.
OS Puppy 4, Dingo. Full Install on HD,WiFi card Netgear WG511, nothing happens when installed in Compaq Presario 2100 laptop, like it is completely dead. Same OS, same WiFi card, very very old unbranded K6 laptop plugged in, found by OS installed in seconds by taking defaults and works with WEP. Time spent on Compaq about 2 days, time spent on K6 10 minutes. My sense is a problem with the cardbus controller, #O2 Micro, Inc. CardBus/SmartCardBus Controller but I am not sure how to proceed. On the working K6 the driver for the WiFi card is The Prism54 and the cardbus controller is a TI PCI1131.
I use an Apple macbook as my main computer and am happy in Terminal, so Consol was not too much of a shock. A pointer to my next step would be great and also a brief explanation as to the thinking behind the suggestion.
Great programme and it has given me fun trying to make it work.

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